House debates

Wednesday, 13 February 2019

Statements by Members

Black Saturday Bushfires: 10th Anniversary

12:12 pm

Photo of Lisa ChestersLisa Chesters (Bendigo, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Assistant Minister for Workplace Relations) Share this | | Hansard source

Like many regional Victorian MPs in this place, I spent last weekend at events with my local community, recognising and remembering Black Saturday 10 years on. I want to start by saying that many across central Victoria do really acknowledge that we were quite lucky on this day: we did not suffer anywhere near as much devastation as other areas in regional Victoria. Across Victoria, 170 people lost their lives. Tragically, one person in Bendigo also lost his life that day. I want to reflect upon his family's journey since that day. Livestock were killed, thousands of homes were destroyed, entire communities were devastated and more than 400,000 hectares were burnt. It was our darkest day in the state of Victoria. It was a day that, even 10 years on, many communities, many people and many families cannot talk about. Whilst we remember that on that day 173 people died, many others have since have lost their lives, many who could not emotionally, physically or mentally recover from the scars and the injuries that they incurred on that day.

Like many, I remember where I was on that day, 7 February 2009. We knew in advance that we would be on red alert that day, that it would be a day of extreme heat. I was working back then for United Voice in Melbourne. I was working very early in the morning—I had the night shift/morning shift—and I can remember walking out of Crown casino just after 9.30 in the morning and going, 'This is far too hot for this time of the morning.' I didn't drive back up the Calder that day. I went to stay at a friend's place because there were already warnings at that time: don't come back to the regions. Like many, I saw it unfold on the TV, watching so many of our volunteers, our emergency services, our CFA, our professional firefighters, our SES and just ordinary community members doing what they could to hold back the fire. The recovery effort post the fires is also something that I'll never forget, along with the way in which communities did try to come together to deal with the grief, to deal with the loss and to deal with the horror that they had experienced.

On Saturday, we paused for a moment at the memorial that's been established in Bendigo to reflect on our experience of Black Saturday and to remember the man who lost his life. One man lost his life. His family spoke about their journey since he passed on. Maybe it was a bittersweet moment—last Saturday was a very different day than Black Saturday—but, just as Mr Kane's sister stood to speak, it started raining. It was very cold. We sat there and sat through it, and the children from Specimen Hill played in the rain. We had the minstrel singers from Our Place, who were established in terms of recovery after the bushfires, singing through the rain with their CFA umbrellas. Yet there was that sense amongst all of us, as the CEO reflected on that day, that it's nothing for us to sit through some rain if we reflect upon what people experienced on that day.

Bendigo also lost 75 homes, and 115 outbuildings were destroyed by fire. That was a fire that started at 4 pm in Maiden Gully. It made its way through our suburbs towards our city centre. Our fire crews had been prepared for the worst and, in severe heat and wind, had pushed back as much of the fire as they could. It was a day when professional firefighters and volunteer firefighters really came together to fight the fire. On that day, more than 50 people sought refuge in the emergency response centre at Kangaroo Flat. Many others stayed with friends and family. Maiden Gully is a part of Bendigo. It's all interconnected. You don't want to think about what could have happened to the rest of our town if the fire had not been stopped at Maiden Gully.

It wasn't just Bendigo that was affected. More than 3,000 volunteer firefighters and community members, with 46 trucks, three bulldozers, four graders and six aircraft, battled to contain the blaze at Redesdale. Redesdale sits in between Kyneton and Heathcote. It has a community that is strong and that is aware of fire—it comes quite often. The Redesdale community fought really hard to ensure that their town was as safe as possible.

I should also note that, in February 2010, two teenagers were charged with lighting the devastating Bendigo fire. We should acknowledge the work and effort undertaken by our police and our authorities to pursue those who started these fires that caused so much damage. Not all of the fires were acts of man; some of them were started by accident; some of them were started by nature through lightning strikes and so on and so forth—although there wasn't any real lightning on that day, but it has happened in other areas.

Ten years on, what I think all regional members really reflect upon is the recovery effort and the efforts of our community to deal with their grief and move forward. It's fair to say that a number of people in Bendigo have what we call 'survivor's guilt', in that we were nowhere near as badly affected as other areas. Our community was able to rally around those who lost their homes and help them rebuild. Our community rallied around the Kane family to ensure they had the support they required. But how do you really comprehend the loss of an entire community, which other areas, particularly in the electorates of McEwen and Indi, are still working through to this day?

What we know is that since then, 10 years on, we have changed the way in which we tackle bushfires. Today, the response and the modelling that have gone on since Black Saturday means that our communities have a better fighting chance—the way in which we deploy water-bombers, the way in which we get communities out as early as we can. We respond differently now to bushfires and the threat of bushfires, and we know that it is saving not only property but also lives.

I have over 60 volunteer firefighter brigades and a professional firefighting unit in my electorate of Bendigo. Every time that warning pops up on your phone or you see the signs out the front of the CFA flick from orange into red, the hairs on the back of your neck stick up and you feel a shudder down your spine, hoping nobody does anything stupid. I acknowledge the change in behaviour and culture we've had across the region since Black Saturday. People have changed how they work. The moment they see that it's a red day or an extreme weather day, people don't work in those industries that could spark a fire. People are really conscious of what they do on those days. Our trains slow down deliberately to ensure that there is no adverse spark. Our mechanics change what they do. We don't work on our farms. Our farmers change what they might have otherwise done on that day. There has been a real change in culture, with every individual taking responsibility for what they do on code red days so a fire can't be started.

In closing, I acknowledge the Caine family—their loss, how they're going on their journey, their path to recovery—acknowledge all the people who did lose their homes in the Bendigo electorate, acknowledge all of the volunteers and their countless hours in fighting the fires and in the recovery and, like all the people here today, acknowledge how our nation came together to support those people when they were most in need.

12:22 pm

Photo of Rob MitchellRob Mitchell (McEwen, Australian Labor Party) Share this | | Hansard source

At 11.47 am, 7 February 2009, our world, our communities, changed forever. From a little strike that started on a powerline in a paddock to Australia's worst natural disaster, 173 people lost their lives and 440 were taken to hospital, and there have been many more since. After the 10 years from that day, we still fight day in, day out with the trauma from that particular time. I'm not going to go through all the stats, because we know them. Over the last 10 years we've learnt all the stats about what happened. But there are people who probably don't get the recognition they deserve. Their work and their effort is second to none. They are the 19,000 CFA volunteers who fought the fire and our DELWP firefighters who went out there and gave their all—people who were in communities day in, day out and saw the worst of it from the start.

One of those people I think of quite often is Cameron Caine, who was the policeman at Kinglake. Cameron is a good bloke. He has bad political judgement—he ran against me in 2010—but he is a good mate. I think about what he has been through and the troubles he faces even today. I particularly want to think about one person. There are many that sit under the spotlight; many just go and do their job and get on with it. Ben Hardman was the member for Seymour at that time, and nearly all of that Black Saturday fire was in his electorate. He worked tirelessly. I'm sure the member for Murray knows that Ben Hardman is a decent bloke. He just gets on with his job, but he has always been very unassuming about it. I think quite often we forget these people who just get in there and do it. I think of people like the Strathewen Bushfire Relief Company—David Brown, Malcolm Hackett and Mary Avola.

I went to the 10th anniversary at Strathewen the other night. It was just an amazing evening. A few hundred people turned up. There were some very interesting stories told from that day—where people have gone, what they've done, what they've lost. I think one of the best stories I heard was from a young fella who was one at the time. He gets up to speak and says, 'I can't really remember much about the fires,' which was understandable at one year of age, but he talked about life in Strathewen since. He was talking about how the best present he ever received was on his ninth birthday, because mum and dad bought him a jersey cow and calf. Now he's learnt to ride the tractors through the bush and check the fences and use the bobcat. There was another young family there that had bought after the fires. The thing that came through all these stories—including from Mary Avola, who talked about the loss of her husband—was the strength and the unity that that community and the region has got since those fires went through.

I went down to Wandong, which is another place that really was the start of it. I still remember the day that it happened. I'd finished painting the engine bay on a car, as you do on a hot day, and I got a phone call saying, 'The fires are happening,' et cetera. So I flicked the radio on to 3AW—3-Always-Wrong as it's known. They reported that the town of Wandong had gone. So I rang Ben Hardman and said, 'Ben, look, I've just heard the township of Wandong has gone.' He said: 'Gee, I hope not, Robbie. I've been on the fire truck here fighting the fire at the school for the last three hours and it still looks good.' You think about that community that was getting cut off and everything put away, but people stood strong and still stand strong today—people like Karen Christensen, Allen Hall and Buffy Leadbeater. You head to Clonbinane, another little town that was heavily impacted, and you meet people like Janelle Morgan, and you just think, 'Wow, how lucky are we to have these sorts of people in our community, day in, day out?' Wherever you go across the region, you know that these communities started at 11.47 on that morning facing a new normal.

Premier Brumby was criticised by the opposition, who said that he was being melodramatic and over the top in the days leading up to that fire. Mr Brumby is owed an apology. He warned us what was going to happen and he was right. Communities paid a very heavy toll. But they've come back. The bush, like the people, has scars that will never go away and will never be healed. But they've come back bigger, better and stronger. Through every tragedy we face, there is an opportunity. The opportunity for this nation was to learn from those bushfires. Since those bushfires, people who were heavily involved at the start have been able to go on to other natural disasters and help our communities in need.

We learnt some lessons that day—some very, very important lessons. They say that the cream rises to the top; we're full of cream, because there are a lot of people who have risen to the top and shone. Some of those people today are starting to feel a bit weary of it all. It has been 10 years of hard slog, rebuilding communities, rebuilding families, growing—that sort of thing—and they're getting tired. My hope is that we can see some real action to bring in more mental health services for people. Professor Robert Gordon—if you ever get the opportunity to listen to what he's said—has been spot on, all the way through these 10 years.

I've been very lucky and blessed to be able to go through those communities. I lived in them. We were very lucky the fire didn't get to our house. It got across the road. It's fair to say the old heart rate goes up a fair bit when you watch this wave of flame come in. It was like when you go to the beach and you have those little rolling waves. That's what it was like. But then the red trucks turned up and people put the fires out, so we were lucky. Where we have been lucky is to have the strength and resilience that we've got, as people and as communities, to rebuild and to make them so much more special. We'll never forget, but we don't stand still. We don't stand still where we were. We keep going, and going forward, because that's what we have to do.

As I said, it's a new normal that we've woken up to. There's not a person in those communities now who doesn't get up in the morning when it's a hot day and the winds are blowing and, first thing, look up in the sky. Is there smoke? What's going to happen? And you get prepared. We still don't know the full impact it has had on children. Many children have dealt with it, like adults, in different ways—some better than others. But even today there are still those who face difficulties from when they were young, and they're young adults now. When you go to the anniversary events, you get to see the people who were there day in, day out, and you see just how much our communities mean to our people. There is no normal. There is no textbook on how you deal with this. Some people go at different speeds to others. Some stay. Some move away. But, when you go to the anniversary events, they all come back together.

There is a shared bond that can never be broken. It can never be broken because of what they went through and how they reacted. You could never write a full list of all the people that did everything in those bushfires, right down to the people who just drove in to relief centres and said, 'What can I do?' From all over Australia, people came in to help our communities. These people will never forget this stuff. That's why, when there have been other disasters, our communities have rallied very quickly to help. We've gone through that and we know what it's like. As I said, 10 years on, things have changed but the new normal is here to stay. We continue to keep growing and getting on with it.

12:32 pm

Photo of Damian DrumDamian Drum (Murray, National Party) Share this | | Hansard source

Certainly, Black Saturday 2009 was a horrific time in Victoria's history. Prior to 2009, we were often told you had two options if fires were in your particular area: if you want to leave, leave early; if you want to stay and fight, make sure you plan well and make sure you prepare your property so that you can stay. I think the statistics are that roughly 90 per cent of people who lost their houses in fires prior to 2009 lost their houses in the 10 to 15 to 20 minutes once the fire front had gone past. The embers would slowly take hold of leaves in gutters. The embers and sparks would take a little while to actually take on and start the burning process of a house. It was a slower process after the event.

What we found out though was that some of the people who decided to stay, at Kinglake in particular, quite simply didn't have a chance. Whilst they were very well prepared, the force and the brutality of the fire front came through from Kilmore—it started at Kilmore earlier in the day—and hit the townships of Kinglake West and Kinglake in particular. The people there were extremely well prepared, with houses that were cleared, houses that were hosed down, fire pumps at the ready and a good supply of water to keep the lawns wet. Ultimately, the fire went straight through those properties. The individual anecdotal tales are horrific. The speed with which the fire moved and the winds on that day have been well reported. It was a perfect cocktail of incredibly high winds mixed with about four days in a row of incredibly high temperatures. It tended to follow the bush, the trees and the timber associated with the roadways as it found its way from Kilmore all the way over to the heavier bushland of Kinglake and Kinglake West.

As a member of the Victorian parliament at the time, I was escorted onto the mountain on the Monday. I was very conscious that there were reasons not to go up there, but there was a need, as a representative of that region, to make sure we had an understanding of the devastation. When we went up there, it was quite shocking. It was confronting. The destruction and the loss were quite startling. On that day we saw not only the physical destruction of the materials up there; we also saw that the survivors had a very distant, faraway look in their eyes. They weren't quite sure what they had in fact lost, what they were going to be able to salvage out of the rubble and how they were going to be able to pick up the pieces and carry on. There was this very distraught, distant look in their eyes, and we weren't quite sure of how they were going to handle the oncoming days, weeks, months and years.

I think Premier Brumby and his team handled the aftermath really well. They put in place high-quality individuals as staff who were given the task of liaising with the victims, the survivors, who had a whole raft of questions about how they could clean up, what assistance they were going to get to clean up, what they could salvage, when they could get back up there on the mountain, what was available in the way of state government and local government assistance and how long they were going to be able to access the temporary accommodation which was set up at Kinglake. Many of the people were there for over 12 months, and it became its own little village over time. The survivors also wanted to know what services in relation to mental health and counselling were going to be put in place and how they were going to be accessed.

It was an incredibly dark period in Victoria's history. It was something that was totally shocking. As the member for Mitchell and the member for Bendigo quite rightly stated, it changed the way we now prepare for fires on those atrocious days when we are looking at the highest fire ratings. We no longer give people the option to prepare well and stay. The advice is quite simply: leave and leave early and make sure that your valuables are in a position where they may be able to withstand the fire. Certainly we have changed our warning system significantly, predominantly based on what happened on Black Saturday.

I am happy to make my short contribution on this. It is something that we will never forget, nor should we. We should acknowledge those people who came into the aid sphere immediately after the fires. The donations were quite significant—of clothing, bedding, mattresses. People were donating every type of appliance that they could afford to donate, because they knew that so many people were going to be in need of these household appliances. I just want to thank all of those people who did donate and the people who gave up their time to help with the distribution, to hand out some of those things and to make all of that process work over the ensuing weeks, because it did take weeks, months and years before people were able to rebuild and get back on their feet. We will never forget the contribution of those people. We will never forget the rigour and the strength shown by the survivors. We acknowledge them at the 10-year anniversary and hope that we never have to go through that again.

12:39 pm

Photo of Darren ChesterDarren Chester (Gippsland, National Party, Minister for Veterans' Affairs) Share this | | Hansard source

Ten years ago I stood in the main chamber and spoke about the loss of life and the devastation caused in my electorate of Gippsland by the Black Saturday bushfires. I don't mind saying that it was the hardest speech I've ever had to give in my life. Days of listening to tearful Gippslanders—those who had survived, speaking about their narrow escapes, but also telling me about those who, tragically, had perished. It had an impact on me, as I'm sure it did on you, Deputy Speaker Vamvakinou, when you met with people in your own electorate who had been traumatised. It had an impact on local members that perhaps we didn't necessarily understand at the time. I have to say that I was relatively new to parliament. I had been in the parliament for less than six months. It was emotional, and at times I could barely get the words out. But my speech in federal parliament was never meant to be about me. It was about the everyday heroes of Gippsland who had fought the Black Saturday bushfires and it was about how our community had rallied together in this time of extraordinary crisis. It was about the firefighters, the community volunteers, the emergency service workers—those first responders who rush into trouble while the rest of us are rushing away—the contractors who had been put in to start removing dead trees and to open up roads, and the neighbours who had placed themselves in harm's way to help their mates in a time of great need.

As we gathered in Gippsland last week on the 10th anniversary of the Black Saturday bushfires, we had the smell of smoke in the air again as a very poignant reminder of how bushfires in regional Victoria are a part of summer. We remembered those who died, we remembered those whose lives had been changed forever and we remembered those who had contributed so much to our community at a time of need. We paused to give thanks to our community for being so resilient, and to the resourceful people who had the strength to get back in there and rebuild their lives.

We lost 11 people in Gippsland during the Black Saturday bushfires. The services in Gippsland last week commemorated their lives—the lives of Nathan Charles, Fred Frendo, Scott Frendo, Colin Gibson, David Gibson, Alan Jacobs, Miros Jacobs, Luke Jacobs, Annette Leatham, Gertrude Martin and Martin Schultz. These eight men and three women died in the fires across Traralgon South, Callignee, Koornalla, Hazelwood and Jeeralang. I think from time to time that those towns—Traralgon South, the tiny hamlet Callignee, Koornalla, Hazelwood and Jeeralang—are hardly household names, but they are burnt forever into the collective memory of all Gippslanders.

I actually had the chance on Saturday night to speak at a community event in Boolarra, which is another little town in my electorate that was hit by bushfires during the week before Black Saturday, which is sometimes forgotten in the whole Black Saturday conversation. The people of Boolarra suffered enormously in the week leading up to Black Saturday. Houses were destroyed and there was enormous damage to the natural environment. When I spoke at that function of about 250 people, which was pretty much the entire community of Boolarra crammed into the hall, I remembered something that Australian test cricket captain Steve Waugh had used in 2001 on the Indian tour. He apparently wrote on the whiteboard—I don't know if it's true or a myth—'Your attitude is contagious. Is yours worth catching?' Think about that. The reason Steve Waugh wrote that on the board is that Australian cricketers touring India notoriously would whinge about the food and complain about the weather and the pitch. Basically, they'd make excuses for why they couldn't possibly succeed in this hostile environment. The reason I raised that on Saturday night in Boolarra was that the local leadership in the aftermath of the bushfires in Gippsland was contagious. The attitude that people brought to the task was contagious—their determination, their enormous resilience, their willingness to give to each other in extraordinarily tough circumstances. People who had lost the lot would always find someone else who had lost more and then go to their aid. So we were blessed in many ways. I guess it's frustrating for us to sometimes wonder: what if we could harness that level of energy and effort every day, rather just in response to the disasters? But I've got to say that it was great to see it when it came to the fore in a regional Victorian sense in my community of Gippsland during the response phase—and other members have spoken about this: the firefighters, both volunteer firefighters and the contract firefighters through the department, the police, the paramedics. Things went horribly wrong on that day. To lose 173 Victorians in one day—things went horribly wrong.

The member for Murray has just touched on the fact that we learnt a lot from that. We learnt a lot in terms of the messaging to our communities. On the days when the fire conditions are off the scale in terms of danger, we send a message out to people: 'Yes, enact your fire plan, but if a fire starts in your community you won't be able to survive. Just because you've got a well-prepared property doesn't mean you're going to be able to make it through.' That message is very strongly understood in the community now. There are days that are off the scale and you are better off just getting out of there. I think people learnt that message very strongly from Black Saturday. If there was any positive out of Black Saturday, it was that.

The response was extraordinary. Then the recovery phase, which started while the fires were still burning, was something quite amazing to watch as well—to see the volunteer effort from our Red Cross type organisations. Our local councils often come to the fore in these moments. Latrobe City Council, Wellington Shire Council and East Gippsland Shire Council staff came to the fore in establishing centres for people to sleep. People who have lost their homes need somewhere to sleep as a starting point. Some were put up in motels. Some had to sleep those first couple of nights in community facilities.

And then, as my good friend the member for Murray just commented on, in the outpouring of community support during that recovery phase, where goods were donated and cash was donated, we saw the very best of human nature in that regard. And we're seeing it again right now in relation to the Townsville floods. Ironically, when the fires were burning on Black Saturday, Queensland was underwater then as well. Queensland was flooded in 2009. So it's not unusual, unfortunately, at this time of year, for our northern friends to be underwater while Victoria, New South Wales and Tassie battle fires. But to see that recovery effort where people opened their wallets, opened their hearts and made donations to try to help those less fortunate was something that filled me with a great deal of pride.

And then there was the rebuilding phase. The only thing about the rebuilding phase that makes it possible is that people have hope for the future. They find it within themselves to have hope that they can build a better future in their community. Now, I understand that many couldn't go back. Many in my community couldn't go back to those little bush hamlets anymore. They chose not to rebuild, and they moved on with their lives. I can understand that. I don't think anyone thinks any less of them because of that. But to see those prepared to go back into their small communities to clear the house site, to then rebuild and then to watch the natural environment rebuild around them has been something that I think has filled a lot of people in our community with a great deal of joy.

This last week has been an unusual week in my community. There's been a great deal of contemplation as people have reflected on the loss, but also some level of celebration that they have been resilient and have been able to withstand this enormous event. I was in a very small part of my community on Sunday morning, in a place called the Tarra-Bulga National Park. If anyone is listening to this broadcast, I'd encourage them at any time to visit the Tarra-Bulga National Park. It's a beautiful little rainforest about 20 minutes out of the township of Traralgon. They had a 'rhythms in the forest' concert, with local musicians performing and people from the nearby town of Balook. I think there's a total population of 12 people in Balook. All 12 of them were there. They're either in the Friends of Tarra-Bulga National Park or they form the Balook and district ratepayers association, and they put on an amazing concert in that bushland setting surrounded by the natural environment, which has been able to recover remarkably from the Black Saturday bushfires.

I appreciate the opportunity to speak on this 10-year anniversary of the Victorian bushfires. It wasn't only Black Saturday. There were fires leading up to that event in my community which equally had an enormous impact on our region. I mentioned it before: the level of hope and confidence in the future is what sustains these small regional towns. As I said to the people in Boolarra on Saturday night, with their positive, contagious attitudes, they're capable of achieving anything. Our little regional communities are amazing in what they do in times of trouble.

The Latrobe Valley right now faces some tough times. There have been some economic challenges around job losses associated with the Hazelwood Power Station closure. But I'm very confident that with that strong local leadership, with that same positive attitude, the people of the Latrobe Valley will go from strength to strength. We've come back from times a lot tougher than this. It gives me great pleasure to make my comments today, knowing full well that the people of Gippsland and the Latrobe Valley are amongst the most resilient and hardy people in our nation. My thoughts are with them as they deal with their own commemorations of this quite tragic event.

12:48 pm

Photo of Maria VamvakinouMaria Vamvakinou (Calwell, Australian Labor Party) Share this | | Hansard source

Thank you, Minister. With the indulgence of the chamber, I'd like to associate myself with everything that's been said today and to also take the opportunity to express the grief that my community felt when it lost one of its greatest local GPs, Dr Chris Towie. I'd like to remember Chris today, knowing that our community was affected in a profound way. He was one of the 170 people who perished in the Black Saturday fires. I thank the chamber.

Sitting suspended from 12:49 to 16:01